If You Ask Me - Betty White [29]
You have to keep your feet on the ground and remember that this is what you’ve worked for all your life. And now that you’ve achieved it, you don’t want to screw it up. You can’t get carried away with your image, because you know better than anyone else who the real person is.
You don’t just luck into integrity. You work at it.
ADVICE COLUMN
One of the first interview questions always is: What advice would you give young actresses coming into this business?
The answer is:
Treat your profession with respect.
Come in prepared.
Walk in to every situation with a positive, open mind. Allow yourself time to experience a situation before forming an opinion.
To abuse our profession by partying or getting into trouble or copping an attitude like some people do is the height of ingratitude, in my opinion.
To not be grateful for what you’ve been blessed with, knowing how many people in the world would sell their souls to do what you do, or to abuse it is, I think, unconscionable.
In the acting profession and the sporting world, young people are exposed to more temptation, more everything, because they have a whole bunch more money than do young people in other jobs. They’re getting these phenomenal salaries; sometimes it’s too easy to slip into bad behavior. Bad stuff.
I hate to sound like I’m pontificating, but it’s hard to write a book without sounding that way from time to time. When you’re blessed to do the thing you love to do and you’re making a lot of money at it so you can benefit your passion, that’s a pretty great formula. Appreciate it—don’t abuse it.
If you’re not enthusiastic, just lie down and close your eyes and be very quiet.
With Jennifer Love Hewitt.
ERIC HEINILA/CBS/NEWSCOM
On The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
FRANCIS SPECKER/LANDOV
I’M EIGHTY-NINE?
One thing they don’t tell you about growing old—you don’t feel old, you just feel like yourself. And it’s true. I don’t feel eighty-nine years old. I simply am eighty-nine years old.
If I didn’t feel so well, I might have a different philosophy altogether.
But I fall into traps sometimes.
Let’s say I meet someone I find attractive. I have to keep reminding myself of how old I am, because I don’t feel like I’m that old. I fight the urge to flirt and try to shape up. No fool like an old fool.
But I don’t get depressed as the number climbs. Perhaps because I don’t fear death. To some it is such a bête noire that it ruins some of the good time they have left.
Estelle Getty was so afraid of dying that the writers on The Golden Girls couldn’t put a dead joke in the script. This was early on—long before she ever got ill.
Again, I’m quoting my mother, but her take on the subject I thought was great. She said we know so much and can discover so much more, but what no one knows for sure is what exactly happens when we pass on. When we’d lose someone we would grieve, of course, but she would say, “Now he knows the secret.” Somehow that helped the pain for me.
And now—she knows the secret.
If you’ve ever lost a loved one, or witnessed it, you can’t help but see that the body is an envelope for the letter.
My friends kid me that when it happens to me, Allen’s going to be up there waiting for me and probably my mom and dad. That’s my family. But before I can get to them I’m going to have to wade through Booty and Binky and Bob and Panda and Kitta and all my pets through the years—
Picturing that always starts me laughing.
DONALD SANDERS/GLOBE PHOTOS
Afterword
If you have stuck with me this far I say a big thank you. Hope you enjoyed the trip. If not, take comfort in the fact that I had a wonderful time.
Love,
Betty